05.07. 2019, 3pm–8pm – recruitment meeting for MINI-PHRASEBOOK
the application form: https://forms.gle/WC1mYDpepf4SYq7R8
details: 52 339 30 62.
26.07.2019, 5pm – opening of an exhibition by Pamela Bożek, 3 Gdańska St.
Pamela Bożek is an artist who deals with participatory practices of post-artistic character. She cooperates with non-governmental organizations dealing with migrant women’s rights in Poland. Polish-Chechen and Chechen-Polish mini-phrasebook is an artistic participatory project initiated by Pamela Bożek in cooperation with refugees from Chechnya living in the Centre for Foreigners in Grupa, a village located about 60 km from Bydgoszcz, and with residents of Bydgoszcz, as well as with the translator and activist Khedi Alieva.
Post-artistic creative practice of Pamela Bożek, through the process of creating the mini-phrasebook, allows us to look at the complexity of everyday life and the system in which individuals of a given local community live. The project, focused on the practice of language exchange, provides sensitivity and a vision of what the situation of refugees in Poland might look like. As a result, a local version of the Polish-Chechen/Chechen-Polish mini-phrasebook will be published (in the form of an art book).
Pamela Bożek (1991, Stargard) – interdisciplinary visual artist, student of Environmental Doctoral Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, and graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture of the same university. Initiator and facilitator of a bookbinding micro-brand Notesy z Łukowa, which as an artistic project based on participation supports refugees staying at the Centre for Foreigners in Łuków. She deals with post-artistic practices and visual issues in the context of mechanisms of exclusion and stigmatization. In her projects, she addresses issues related to the loss, lack and redistribution of goods.
exhibition open until 07.08.2019
ARTISTIC RESIDENCES
Pamela Bożek, MINI-PHRASEBOOK
curator: Danka Milewska

Polish-Chechen/Chechen-Polish mini-phrasebook by Pamela Bożek is an event-exhibition.

As soon as a green square appears on the gallery window at one of the main streets in the city, the event mode is activated. We’re dealing with facts. History is being written.
Looking at the green square, you see an image taken out of no one knows where and matching no one knows what, unexpected, inappropriate, out of place, unauthorised, illegal. It’s an unpredictable image. It comes from some semantic interruption, a crack. It’s not announced. And that’s what makes it even more alive. The event is not awaited, nor is it controlled. It’s what causes lease disruption and leaves no traces. The event has to do with what is tragic, but without a TV remote control*. This leads to a change in the intellectual categories that we use, and perhaps to the creation of new ones, without the certainty that the new ones will allow us to integrate or understand the event.
Pamela Bożek creates a temporary community of mini-conversations on the spot, in Bydgoszcz and in Grupa – in the Centre for Foreigners. She builds trust. She takes care of micro-relationships. She shares her mindfulness to creases, folds, tucks and hems, because everyday life can be spread to make room for the life scripts carried by each person and to give a look into the future. Thinking about what is external and diverse is completely different from the variation obtained from the same thing.
Combination of cultures means bringing together differences, including linguistic, geographical and cultural ones. It is also the intertwining of one’s artistic practice with the intellectual practice of another person, one’s own writing with the writing of others. It is like a subcutaneous evocation of the original figure of wisdom – Mixticius (Metis), with the traits of a cunning trickster. In this trembling of colours, in the vibration of sounds, in the sound of words, in this constant exchange there is the movement of transformation, which comes from the encounter with another. There is a need to think in two categories at the same time: in the discontinuous and in the continuous. Until you manage to move from this interruption, the breaking of the sign to a continuous rhythm**.
The videos of mini-conversations are recorded after a request for silence. This is a subtle attempt of a Metis experience – to get closer to each other with your body, face, with arranging your tongue in a different language. It is a mutual meeting with the records of different cultural varieties of given nations, countries, streets and houses. Miniaturizing a language by speaking single words allows you to feel its meta-level. And reassemble your thoughts. And heart.
In the book edition of the Polish-Chechen and Chechen-Polish Mini-phrasebook, the artist adapts the idea of conversations (in languages other than Chechen), initiated by Alina Wójcik, a native of Bydgoszcz, to the current reality, and adds new chapters (Generational Care and Women’s Rights). The mini-phrasebook is like a sculpture. A bustling beehive of words interacting with each other like cells or atoms. Words stay together with a bit of well-prepared space to create a translucent sculpture*** between them.
Pamela Bożek’s post-artistic practice exaggerates issues related to multi-layered exclusion, invisibility, discrimination, thus making room for a mental journey, for the movement of approaching, emerging from the body of curiosity, openness and readiness for the event.
The border always appears where there is a relationship and contact between people. It is then that the borders of one person meet the borders of another person. And then equality, freedom and communication determine quality at the borders of ourselves.

Danka Milewska
curator of the event

*Franҁois Laplantine, Alexis Nouss, Métissages, 2001, translated by Danka Milewska
** ibid.
*** Agnes Denes, The Human Argument, 2008, translated by Danka Milewska

26.07.2019 – 07.08.2019, 3 Gdańska St., Bydgoszcz